Several paradigms show that responses to one event compromise responses to a second event for around 500 ms. Such effects are generally attributed to attentional capacity limitations associated with processing information in the first event. In a task in which targets could be distinguished only by their meaning, we varied the semantic relationship between distractors and targets following at d...

Humans are very sensitive to symmetry in visual patterns. Symmetry is detected and recognized very rapidly, and eye fixations are concentrated along the axis of symmetry or the symmetrical center of the patterns. This suggests that symmetry is a highly salient feature. Existing computational models of saliency, however, have mainly focused on contrast as a measure of saliency. These models do n...

In adult readers, letters, and words are rapidly identified within visual networks to allow for efficient reading abilities. Neuroimaging studies of orthography have mostly used words and letter strings that recruit many hierarchical levels in reading. Understanding how single letters are processed could provide further insight into orthographic processing. The present study investigated orthog...

An engineering control approach is developed for the movement of attention, based on several features: experimental data indicating separate sites for attention modulation and for the creation of that modulation; the resulting analogy with motor control, to which an engineering approach has been applied; simulation and qualitative results supporting the presence of several of the necessary modu...